backbite

Estimated CEFR level: C2 — Proficiency

Estimated from word frequency; not an official CEFR classification.

Definition

From Middle English bakbiten, bacbiten, equivalent to back- + bite. Cognate with Icelandic bakbíta (“to backbite, vilify”).

So the Devonshire men, having beans to sow (which they ought to have done on Good Friday) went home; and our Somerset friends only stayed for two days more to backbite them. — Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor, R. D. (Richard Doddridge) Blackmore
"Ay, ay, let them come that list, and play at bo-peep--ay, fleer and backbite me; but they may come for wool and go back shorn: 'His home is savory whom God loves;'--besides, 'The rich man's blunders pass current for wise maxims;' so that I, being a governor, and therefore wealthy, and bountiful to boot--as I intend to be--nobody will see any blemish in me. — Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Whereat all the companie being much astonished, turned their eyes from beholding him working, to looke on that strange accident.... Not long after, manie of the court that hitherunto had born a kind of fayned friendship towards him, began now greatly to envie at his progresse and rising in goodness, using manie crooked, backbiting meanes to diffame his vertues with the black markes of hypocrisie. — The Lady of the Lake, Walter Scott

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